In times of crisis, business cost saving ideas can often become an obsession. From office coffee and tea supplies, to the dismissal of employees. Managers develop several ideas that don’t always achieve the best results.
The truth is that business cost saving ideas, if viewed from the perspective of BPM process modeling should constantly be developed as part of continuous improvement.
Managers should develop ideas to keep the company strong and focused on its strategic objectives. A daily practice that will prepare the company to face crises without having to take desperate or ridiculous measures like dismissing staff or eliminating meager expenditures (such as coffee and tea).
With this in mind, let’s look at some business cost saving ideas and tactics which you should constantly practice, especially if you’re an entrepreneur facing the challenges of a small business.
See also: Procurement process flowchart: Cost reduction and transparency
5 business cost saving ideas
Every possible business cost saving idea must go through the proper planning channels. Cross every ‘t’ and dot every ‘i’ to get the best results. Take more than just palliative measures that only solve the effects of problems, while ignoring the causes.
Based on this principle, we selected 5 simple tactics that are easy to learn and, in most cases, easy to put into practice.
1- Reducing tools and applications
Today, with the spread of excellent SaaS style companies, many can reduce their costs by using cloud-based apps. These apps have a range of benefits including remote access.
On the one hand this is a great idea, but on the other hand, many companies under utilize or even forget some of the benefits. Here are some examples:
- Image banks: Free options exist if this isn’t an essential activity in your business.
- Internal communication apps: Slack, email accounts, video conferencing apps, other chat apps, multiple file sharing drives. Find out what is essential and what you can cut without disrupting operations.
- Image editing software: If this isn’t an activity at the core of your company’s business, there are several reasonable free apps such as GIMP, for example.
2- Repetitive process automation
Once you finish narrowing down your cloud apps to only what’s essential, you should consider integrating and automating repetitive tasks
Examples:
- Update your customer spreadsheet each time a transaction is approved.
- Pass client contact lists from your spreadsheets to your email trigger app.
- Change a customer’s lead classification in your marketing automation program each time they make an approved e-commerce transaction.
- Send a voice message to your customer’s cell phone if your bank notifies you that they are late with a recurring payment.
By integrating apps and automating tasks such as these, through sites like Pluga and Zapier, you’ll save time and reduce errors. This will allow you and your employees to concentrate on other activities.
3- A home office
A home office in combination with your essential communication tools is a situation that can present you several business cost-saving ideas, such as:
- By eliminating their daily commute to work, your employees have more free time, which motivates them and increases productivity.
- You’ll cut down on utility costs, such as electricity as well as other resources, like office supplies.
- If your employees are permanently based at home, furniture expenses and office rent will disappear.
- Employees who work from home are never late!
4- Personnel Optimization
Instead of making people redundant in difficult times, ensure your team is always productive and at the right size.
This is a strategic HR management practice that many overlook, despite its enormous potential for reducing business expenses.
Here are some tips:
- By hiring an appropriate number of employees who all share the profile and values of your business will produce and engage more.
- Take on interns, but train and hire them only if they’re as productive as your employees.
- Consider Jack Welch’s policy: he recommends dismissing 10% of his employees every year, such as those who don’t add anything to his company. This means he always maintains a very lean and productive staff roster.
5- Use software to improve processes.
Above, we discussed the removal of costly and unnecessary apps.
So, how about researching and using free apps that can improve your business processes and increase productivity?
There are freemium applications for team and task management, such as Trello and Asana that can organize your operations.
- There is also CRM software with excellent freemium options. Have you tried Hubspot?
- Free BPM process modeling tools are great for discovering and then eliminating wastes, bottlenecks and delays.
Check out this real-life example for generating business cost saving ideas. Improve your process efficiency through the use of our BPM modeling tool.
“Choosing to use HEFLO in my company was an excellent decision. It has greatly facilitated the creation of flowcharts and boosted the development of tools to improve process efficiency and effectiveness.” – Larissa Lima